Abstract
The Benign and Malicious Envy Scale is a promising self-report measure forming a counterpoint to the unidimensional approach to the assessment of dispositional envy. The goals of the present study were to examine the reliability, structure, and measurement equivalence of the Benign and Malicious Envy Scale across four independent groups from the United States, Germany, Russia, and Poland. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the structure of the Benign and Malicious Envy Scale is two-dimensional and its measurement is reliable. Moreover, multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, supplemented by alignment optimization, revealed that the scale is invariant by country across all factors regardless of whether a linguistic distinction between the two envy types in the respective language exists. The results speak to the current debate about whether envy should be conceptualized as unitary or as an emotion that occurs in two distinct forms, supporting the latter view. Additionally, country-level differences in envy point to cultural differences which merit further research.
Highlights
The Dispositional Envy Scale (DES) is characterized by good psychometric properties, i.e., very good reliability, acceptable support for a one-factor solution verified via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and construct validity
In further structural analysis we used a maximum likelihood with scaled shifted correction as an estimator which is suitable to deal with the lack of the multivariate normality
According to recommendations, omega coefficient should be even preferred for assessing reliability of scales characterized by the existence of skewed test items (Trizano-Hermosilla & Alvarado, 2016). We find it important when analyzing the reliability of the Benign and Malicious Envy Scale (BeMaS) test scores—especially it applies to the items measuring malicious envy which tend to be represented by positively skewed distribution suggesting “floor effect”—which means that subjects usually answer using lower points of response scale and, in consequence, get lower results in a whole subscale (Kowalski, Rogoza, Vernon, & Schermer, 2018)
Summary
Envy is a complex reaction resulting from a social comparison when the individual lacks subjectively surpassing qualities, possessions, or achievements of another person (Parrott & Smith, 1993). During the long research tradition, envy was mostly treated as an episodic construct (e.g., Parrott & Smith, 1993; Van de Ven, Zeelenberg, & Pieters, 2009, 2012), but in the field of individual differences it started to be argued to arise at the dispositional level as well (Lange, Blatz, & Crusius, 2018a; Lange & Crusius, 2015a; Smith et al, 1999). The 10-item envy subscale of the Vices and Virtues Scale (Veselka, Giammarco, & Vernon, 2014) captures envy as a personality trait classified within the idea of “seven deadly sins”, as inspired by the traditional Christian classification of basic human sins and shortcomings which in turn are in opposition to seven cardinal vices. In this vein, envy is opposed to the vice of kindness and
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